Archive for the ‘Black Liberation Theology’ Category

By S. A. Miller
The Washington Times
April 1, 2008
(This is not an “April Fools” joke)

The church where Sen. Barack Obama has worshipped for two decades publicly declares that its ministry is founded on a 1960s book that espouses “the destruction of the white enemy.”
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During his appearance last week on ABC’s “The View,” Sen. Barack Obama tells hosts (from left) Whoopi Goldberg, Barbara Walters, Joy Behar, Sherri Shepherd and Elisabeth Hasselbeck that if they visited his “wonderful, welcoming church” on any given Sunday, the themes of mercy, sin, family and forgiveness would make them “feel right at home.” (ABC-TV via Associated Press)
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Trinity United Church of Christ’s Web site says its teachings are based on the black liberation theology of James H. Cone and his 1969 book “Black Theology and Black Power.”
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“What we need is the divine love as expressed in Black Power, which is the power of black people to destroy their oppressors here and now by any means at their disposal. Unless God is participating in this holy activity, we must reject his love,” Mr. Cone wrote in the book.
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Mr. Cone, a professor at the Union Theological Seminary in New York, added that “black theology will accept only the love of God which participates in the destruction of the white enemy.”
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Mr. Obama’s campaign, which for weeks has weathered criticism about inflammatory racial language by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. at Trinity, said the candidate “vehemently disagrees” with those tenets.

The reaction to Sen. Barack Obama’s March 18 speech in Philadelphia on his firebrand pastor and race in America showsa generation gap within the black community, according to scholars and analysts.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., left, shown here with his pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, March 10, 2005. Obama on Friday March 14, 2008 denounced inflammatory remarks from his pastor, who has railed against the United States and accused the country of bringing on the Sept. 11 attacks by spreading terrorism.(AP Photo/Trinity United Church of Christ)
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Despite criticism that he didn’t fully address the angry comments by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Mr. Obama’s youth and powerful skills as an orator continue to offer hope to many that he can bridge what he defined in his speech as a national “stalemate” — a civil rights era perception of race as an always-present threat to blacks versus the more unifying view of a younger generation that increasingly sees the world and politics as colorblind.

Charles Ellison, a senior fellow at the Center for African-American Policy and chief editor of blackpolicy.org, describes a tension among blacks and a “growing generation gap between new school versus old school.”

“The new hip-hop generation, there is a focus on economic, political and social empowerment. They look at a lot of major black elected officials who are young — D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty; in Newark, Cory Booker; and in Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, who are all about the empowerment paradigm. We’ve got close to 650 black state elected officials and 43 black members of Congress, so they are used to this notion already in popular media.”